Volume 1 — SUMMER PASTIME.

Do you ask how I’d amuse me When the long bright summer comes, And welcome leisure woos me To shun life’s crowded homes; To shun the sultry city, Whose dense, oppressive air Might make one weep with pity For those who must be there? I’ll tell you then—I would not To foreign countries roam, As though my fancy could not Find occupance at home; Nor to home-haunts of fashion Would I, least of all, repair, For guilt, and pride, and passion, Have summer-quarters there. Far, far from watering-places Of note and name I’d keep, For there would vapid faces Still throng me in my sleep; Then contact with the foolish, The arrogant, the vain, The meaningless—the mulish, Would sicken heart and brain. No—I’d seek some shore of ocean Where nothing comes to mar The ever-fresh commotion Of sea and land at war; Save the gentle evening only As it steals along the deep, So spirit-like and lonely, To still the waves to sleep. There long hours I’d spend in viewing The elemental strife, My soul the while subduing With the littleness of life; Of life, with all its paltry plans, Its conflicts and its cares— The feebleness of all that’s man’s— The might that’s God’s and theirs! And when eve came I’d listen To the stilling of that war, Till o’er my head should glisten The first pure silver star; Then, wandering homeward slowly, I’d learn my heart the tune Which the dreaming billows lowly, Were murmuring to the moon! R.C.